Decisions

Opinions from the Connecticut Supreme Court and Appellate Court are officially published each week in the Connecticut Law Journal, but in recent years have also been published online. Typically, opinions are published as 'advance release opinions' each Monday after 11:30 a.m. They are considered officially published on the date as indicated on the opinion itself.

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Third-Party Commentary
As time allows, we will offer commentary on select opinions of the Supreme and Appellate Court. If there is a particular case you are following or may be involved in personally, you can contact us with details and we may be able to share some details.

Simms v. Seaman, 308 Conn. 523 (2013)
Argued on September 19, 2012 and opinion officially published May 21, 2013, it appears that members of the Connecticut Supreme Court, and quite likely a small army of legal research assistants, spent much of their 245 days trying to determine just how far back they could go before finding an authority they could rely on to justify the opinion they wanted to issue. The answer in this case was 1497. No, that's not a joke — you can read it for yourself here at Google Scholar.

It reads in relevant part under the header "History of the Litigation Privilege":
"Thus, an English court determined in 1497 that an action for 'scandalum magnatum,' or slander, would not lie against a peer accused of forgery whose case was still pending because 'no punishment was ever appointed for a suit in law, however it be false, and for vexation.' Beauchamps v. Croft, 73 Eng. Rep. 639 (Q.B.1497)."